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A review by abbutterflie
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
4.0
At first this book kind of annoyed me. I thought it was following the usual clichéd narrative, seen in books like 'The Help', of poor impoverished, black folk providing the backdrop, with a family of white saviours as protagonists, saving the black folk from themselves and the cruelties of more distant white folk who the readers aren't really meant to identify with anyway.
In the end, it was more nuanced. The white protagonists wouldn't have survived longer than about a week without the help and generosity of their Congolese neighbours and friends. The travails of the Congo can be squarely placed in the court of the Western powers that first colonised the Congo, and then ensured that on independence, the nation was not so much still born, as malnourished and beaten before birth and then murdered as soon as it emerged. The Congolese aren't waiting for some magical white saviour, they are trying pretty darn hard to make it themselves, and would have been a lot better off with even indifference from the west, as opposed to the meddling, both openly malicious and supposedly helpful that they ended up with. Kingsolver definitely wants to get across how culpable she feels the West is in creating the supposed 'heart of darkness'.
She finishes by saying how when the Portuguese first landed in the Congo, they found advanced civilisations, justice systems and a nation that was originally engaged with as an equal - these are described in contemporaneous texts and letters sent by the early explorers. These tend not to be mentioned in history books today. The myth of a backward Hobbesian Africa is something invented by the colonialists to justify their own inhumanity. How else could one justify the crime against humanity that was the slave trade and subsequent colonisation and subjugation of Africa?
Returning to the book, some of the metaphors are a little heavy handed, for example, the caged parrot, freed, but having forgotten how to fly, its freedom is only the freedom to be eaten by a civet cat or mongoose. It is worth reading though, and I applaud it for not painting Africans as passive victims as we so often see, but courageous and resourceful people trying to take control of their own destiny.
In the end, it was more nuanced. The white protagonists wouldn't have survived longer than about a week without the help and generosity of their Congolese neighbours and friends. The travails of the Congo can be squarely placed in the court of the Western powers that first colonised the Congo, and then ensured that on independence, the nation was not so much still born, as malnourished and beaten before birth and then murdered as soon as it emerged. The Congolese aren't waiting for some magical white saviour, they are trying pretty darn hard to make it themselves, and would have been a lot better off with even indifference from the west, as opposed to the meddling, both openly malicious and supposedly helpful that they ended up with. Kingsolver definitely wants to get across how culpable she feels the West is in creating the supposed 'heart of darkness'.
She finishes by saying how when the Portuguese first landed in the Congo, they found advanced civilisations, justice systems and a nation that was originally engaged with as an equal - these are described in contemporaneous texts and letters sent by the early explorers. These tend not to be mentioned in history books today. The myth of a backward Hobbesian Africa is something invented by the colonialists to justify their own inhumanity. How else could one justify the crime against humanity that was the slave trade and subsequent colonisation and subjugation of Africa?
Returning to the book, some of the metaphors are a little heavy handed, for example, the caged parrot, freed, but having forgotten how to fly, its freedom is only the freedom to be eaten by a civet cat or mongoose. It is worth reading though, and I applaud it for not painting Africans as passive victims as we so often see, but courageous and resourceful people trying to take control of their own destiny.